(no subject)
Hello everyone! Ahh it's been a busy month, but I think a good one overall.
After three weeks, I feel like I am finally settling into a routine at work. Honestly, most of what I do is input/data ntry, but I don't mind it at all. Of everything I have during the day, though, probably about a third of it is problematic and I have to do some digging to figure out what's going on. I communicate with the Support Dept pretty frequently now, and they are teaching me how to recognize certain errors and codes efore the computer tells me, so that I can understand what the codes mean and what support does to fix them. It's pretty interesting to me to see how everything is starting to fit together and what my role actually is. Pretty soon I will be getting trained on some more aspects of the job, like inputting wires and check requests.
Office life is pretty similar to what I expected. You live in a square and get to know the people in neighboring squares pretty well. In our area, there are 4 departments: AP (my group), Support, AR, and Customer Service (they take up half of the area...). CS is a pretty tight-knit group for having so many people, and they aren't really social outside of their dept. AR is a fairly closed-off group, and I think there is maybe 15 of them? There is a lot of drama (it's mostly old hens arguing with each other), but they still do fun stuff as a small group. Support has I think 10 people, and they have all been really nice to me so far. Support and AP do everything together. AP is only 12 people right now, and we are split into 2 teams: PRH and Digital. PRH has 8 people right now, myself included. We also have one person who is technically a clerk, but she helps with PRH for half the day. The digital team is only 4 people at the moment, but they plan to expand it by 20 people hopefully by Feb... We'll see. On Thursday we had a baby shower for one of the women on Support. She is due right before Christmas, and she is super excited. I like her, she is really friendly. On Friday we had a birthday party for the clerk who helps PRH. She sits at the entrance to our little area, and she is really awesome. At first, I was terrified of her because she just looks like a super mean old lady. Then I had lunch with her and a couple others one day and she is actually super nice and caring. She now smiles and tells me good morning every day.
My coworkers are a real trip, and keep every day interesting. I'll have to mention them another time, at least the one guy who sits across from me. He's... unique.
In non-work news, it's NOVEMBER! And that means National Novel Writing Month! NaNo is basically a personal shallenge: write 50k words of a novel during the month of November. It started in the late 90s by a group in California, and has expeanded across the world. I first participated in 2012 and won. I have won every year that I have attemtped (but usually don't win during the 2 camps they have every year). Last year, due to it being senior year, I was unable to participate. Sad times. This year, I am using the time to work on my second book in my quartet, and I am going insane. Normally, I spend the last couple week of October planning and preparing for NaNo. I'm talking outlines, scene descriptions, character sheets, maps, floor plans, you name it. This year I was too busy an did not have the time. Thus why I went with book 2, since I already have the backgroud things from doing book 1. The only plot point I had prepared, however, was this: "By the end of the book, blow up [characters' planet]." That was it. My friend laughed at me when I told her, and has taken to calling me Darth Writer. NaNo got off to a slow start since I didn't really have a definitive starting point or idea of how this interstellar war was going to go. About a week in I found some opening strands of subplots, and was using those for a while. Now that my main story arc is starting, I'm kind of hitting a wall again... Gotta fix that.
The MD region for NaNo is always pretty quit in my particular county. Someone on the MD forum asked if we had a Discord srver. After a week, no one had named one, but tons of people showed interest ,so I figured what the hell, I'll make one myself. So I did! I host virtual write-ins twice a week (Wed 7-9pm and Sat 2-6pm) with voice chat (and accompanying text chat), challenges, timed word sprints, and even role rewards for winners. It doesn't take much for me to host them, and I can do it without leaving the house, so I'm more than happy to. We have had 4 people show up to every single one (our 6th write-in is today), and the most we ever had in one was 13 participants! The server just hit 50 members today, so I'm really excited. Every weekend there are people in the chat saying how glad they are that the server exists. Gives me warm fuzzies knowing I made a positive impact on someone.
Anyway, that's the biggest happenings in my life. I'm a bit crunchd for time (the next write-in starts in half an hour so I have to get set up), but I hope you all are doing awesomely! Once NaNo is over I will have more time to be back again!
After three weeks, I feel like I am finally settling into a routine at work. Honestly, most of what I do is input/data ntry, but I don't mind it at all. Of everything I have during the day, though, probably about a third of it is problematic and I have to do some digging to figure out what's going on. I communicate with the Support Dept pretty frequently now, and they are teaching me how to recognize certain errors and codes efore the computer tells me, so that I can understand what the codes mean and what support does to fix them. It's pretty interesting to me to see how everything is starting to fit together and what my role actually is. Pretty soon I will be getting trained on some more aspects of the job, like inputting wires and check requests.
Office life is pretty similar to what I expected. You live in a square and get to know the people in neighboring squares pretty well. In our area, there are 4 departments: AP (my group), Support, AR, and Customer Service (they take up half of the area...). CS is a pretty tight-knit group for having so many people, and they aren't really social outside of their dept. AR is a fairly closed-off group, and I think there is maybe 15 of them? There is a lot of drama (it's mostly old hens arguing with each other), but they still do fun stuff as a small group. Support has I think 10 people, and they have all been really nice to me so far. Support and AP do everything together. AP is only 12 people right now, and we are split into 2 teams: PRH and Digital. PRH has 8 people right now, myself included. We also have one person who is technically a clerk, but she helps with PRH for half the day. The digital team is only 4 people at the moment, but they plan to expand it by 20 people hopefully by Feb... We'll see. On Thursday we had a baby shower for one of the women on Support. She is due right before Christmas, and she is super excited. I like her, she is really friendly. On Friday we had a birthday party for the clerk who helps PRH. She sits at the entrance to our little area, and she is really awesome. At first, I was terrified of her because she just looks like a super mean old lady. Then I had lunch with her and a couple others one day and she is actually super nice and caring. She now smiles and tells me good morning every day.
My coworkers are a real trip, and keep every day interesting. I'll have to mention them another time, at least the one guy who sits across from me. He's... unique.
In non-work news, it's NOVEMBER! And that means National Novel Writing Month! NaNo is basically a personal shallenge: write 50k words of a novel during the month of November. It started in the late 90s by a group in California, and has expeanded across the world. I first participated in 2012 and won. I have won every year that I have attemtped (but usually don't win during the 2 camps they have every year). Last year, due to it being senior year, I was unable to participate. Sad times. This year, I am using the time to work on my second book in my quartet, and I am going insane. Normally, I spend the last couple week of October planning and preparing for NaNo. I'm talking outlines, scene descriptions, character sheets, maps, floor plans, you name it. This year I was too busy an did not have the time. Thus why I went with book 2, since I already have the backgroud things from doing book 1. The only plot point I had prepared, however, was this: "By the end of the book, blow up [characters' planet]." That was it. My friend laughed at me when I told her, and has taken to calling me Darth Writer. NaNo got off to a slow start since I didn't really have a definitive starting point or idea of how this interstellar war was going to go. About a week in I found some opening strands of subplots, and was using those for a while. Now that my main story arc is starting, I'm kind of hitting a wall again... Gotta fix that.
The MD region for NaNo is always pretty quit in my particular county. Someone on the MD forum asked if we had a Discord srver. After a week, no one had named one, but tons of people showed interest ,so I figured what the hell, I'll make one myself. So I did! I host virtual write-ins twice a week (Wed 7-9pm and Sat 2-6pm) with voice chat (and accompanying text chat), challenges, timed word sprints, and even role rewards for winners. It doesn't take much for me to host them, and I can do it without leaving the house, so I'm more than happy to. We have had 4 people show up to every single one (our 6th write-in is today), and the most we ever had in one was 13 participants! The server just hit 50 members today, so I'm really excited. Every weekend there are people in the chat saying how glad they are that the server exists. Gives me warm fuzzies knowing I made a positive impact on someone.
Anyway, that's the biggest happenings in my life. I'm a bit crunchd for time (the next write-in starts in half an hour so I have to get set up), but I hope you all are doing awesomely! Once NaNo is over I will have more time to be back again!